Duolingo is an American educational technology company which produces learning apps and provides language certifications. With this project I was given a hypothetical issue that the app’s DUAs (Daily Active Users) has fallen below its target goal and the company wanted to address this.
My thoughts that the best way to do this was by increasing the retention rate and creating a more engaging experience by developing a Competitive Mode to allow users to compete against one another.
The main objectives for mobile apps are to increase user count, engagement, and brand awareness. Duolingo follows this trend by sending daily reminders to get on the app when there’s been inactivity. Other strategies that are used are gamification and sunk-cost fallacy.
The sunk-cost fallacy highlights that the more you invest in something (time, money, or effort), the more likely you’re to continue that behavior. You can see this being utilized with Duolingo’s “Streak” feature.
Following the sunk-cost fallacy, Duolingo also incorporates a mtx (microtransaction) feature and a premium subscription to grant you the ability to revert any loses from a missed consecutive day, saving you from ruining your streak.
An area where I noticed Duolingo was lacking was with the activity within its “Clubs” and “Leaderboards” tabs. Clubs were created with the intention of its users to be able to “connect online and stay motivated”. This was accomplished by joining a small group that competes for the highest score, while also encouraging one another with an emoji-based chat system – yet, when taking a look at the weekly leaderboards you the inactivity of users was difficult to go unnoticed.
Encouraging competition with other players has the ability to motivate users to maintain usage with the app and promote further activity. With this in mind I focused on creative strategy, UI, and UX to develop a feature within Duolingo that would allow users to challenge their friends who are studying the same languages.
This is done by utilizing an algorithm to gather data on the words learned by two players, and pitting them against the clock to solve a series of questions. The player with the most correct answers within the allotted time would be granted RP (Ranked Points) that would place them on a leaderboard for visible indication of progression.
This would further motivate users to learn and rank higher than their peers and global community.
The first step after ideation was to audit the current app, map out the current flow, and assess where improvements could be made within its UX and UI. Thing to also keep in mind was that this “Challenge Mode” feature had to be cohesive with the rest of the app in terms of design and functionality.
Having an extensive experience with video games, I pulled concepts from online games that utilize functions for competitive gaming that can now be considered intuitive based on their success and usage across different titles.
Analyzing the style of the icons and graphics within the existing app, I was able to pull inspiration and design new elements that reflected them. These icons would serve as supporting pieces to help navigate the new Challenge Mode feature more easily.
An obvious area where the UI needed attention to design was the challenge page. Differing from the other pages that Duolingo offered, I decided to provide the Challenge page with a fillable menu to allow customization of functionality that the user could tailor to their wants.
Along with this you can find a slide-out menu if you need to revisit the options that you’ve already set.